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Fannin County Witness to History: Bob Weddle
By Malinda Allison, Fannin County Historical Commission
Mar 3, 2026
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Fannin County Witnesses to History

A Joint Project of the Sam Rayburn House Historic Site and the Fannin County Historical Commission

Celebrating America 250 with Spotlights of Fannin County Citizens Who Participated In or Witnessed Historical Events

Robert Samuel “Bob” Weddle was born in 1921 in Fannin County and attended school in Bonham. After attending Texas Tech University, he entered the US Navy during
World War II. After the war he finished his degree at Texas Tech. He worked at the Sherman Democrat and then purchased and published the Menard News.

He became intrigued with Spanish Texas and published more than a dozen books on that topic, including Wilderness Manhunt: The Spanish Search for La Salle (1973). He and his wife Avis returned to Fannin County and settled on a ranch west of Bonham. He learned to read Spanish and French handwriting. He received a grant that allowed him to spend a year working in the Spanish archives in Seville, Spain. In Madrid he found the journal of Juan Enriques Barroto, who had served as pilot for a Spanish expedition in search of La Salle’s Texas colony that had entered Matagorda Bay and discovered the remains of La Salle’s Texas colony and the remains of the Belle in 1867.

“Weddle thus deserves credit for finding a historical source that greatly aided underwater archeology and contributed importantly to the 2015 exhibit of the Belle’s hull at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.” -- Handbook of Texas.

He is also recognized as the foremost American scholar on La Salle.

In 2001, on orders of King Juan Carlos I of Spain, Weddle was admitted to the Order of Isabel la Católica, the highest honor the Spanish Government can convey on a non-Spaniard.

Of importance to Fannin County history is his book Plow-Horse Cavalry, which is the story of Caney Creek farmers who “left their women and old folks to tend the farms, took their shotguns or squirrel rifles, mounted their plow horses and rode off” to fight in the Civil War as part of the Texas 34th Cavalry. The book was written using letters from his family. The book is available at the Portal to Texas History
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1330313/

Bob Weddle died in 2015 and is buried in Carson Cemetery. For more about Bob Weddle, see the Handbook of Texas.